


Important things

by Veto_power_over_clocks



Series: Decepticon Hot Rod AU [4]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Decepticon Hot Rod AU, M/M, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 14:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21303281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veto_power_over_clocks/pseuds/Veto_power_over_clocks
Summary: Private chirolanguage lessons with Deadlock. That definitely won't worsen Hot Rod's pining, right?
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock & Hot Rod, Drift | Deadlock/Hot Rod
Series: Decepticon Hot Rod AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1189521
Comments: 31
Kudos: 101





	Important things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marsreds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsreds/gifts).

> Hi! Welcome to the AU in which Hot Rod's a Decepticon. In previous fics: Hot Rod and Deadlock stablished an alliance of mutual protection that's disguised as an agreement in which Deadlock protects Hot Rod, and it's represented by a mark on Hot Rod's neck. They also make it look like Deadlock's interest in Hot Rod isn't very pure.
> 
> To old readers: hi! I hope you've been well. Hug your loved ones, cut out toxic people from your life, find something that makes you smile. Things happen a lot sometimes.
> 
> As usual, thanks to the wonderful, beautiful and amazing Squire and Mars for the cheerleading.
> 
> Last, and most importantly, this fic is for Mars, for being in this world.

Don’t walk too fast or everyone will think you’re eager. Don’t walk too slow or everyone will think you don’t want to go. A normal pace, yes. That’s what he needs.

Hot Rod still ends up hurrying when he finds himself alone in a hallway. Hurrying and not paying attention to his surroundings.

“Going somewhere?” asks a voice from one of the doors he passes. The teasing tone is what stops him in his tracks.

“Uh, yeah,” Hot Rod says, trying to sound nonchalant and turning around.

“Good!” Thunderbird is leaning against the doorframe of the comms' room, smiling softly, his wings low. In one fluid, graceful movement, he pushes himself off the doorframe and rolls to Hot Rod’s side, stopping so smoothly and standing so still that it’s hard to believe that just an instant before he’d been in motion. It’s easy to tell he’d been forged to make pirouettes in the air. “Dear Deadlock called you, I assume?”

Usually, it’s hard for Hot Rod not to smile when he hears Deadlock’s name. This time, he wants to grimace. Is he that obvious?

“Yeah,” he says as nonchalantly as possible.

“He’s been keeping you busy lately, hasn’t he?” Thunderbird says as he starts rolling in the same direction Hot Rod was headed, his tone matching Hot Rod’s. “Some people were talking about that today. With this, it’ll be…” He raises a hand and counts with his fingers. “Four times in ten days?”

Hot Rod adjusts his pace to walk next to Thunderbird.

“You’re keeping count,” he says, judging.

“Oh, not me. I’m only repeating what I’ve heard,” Thunderbird says innocently. “What can I say? Gossip is our only source of entertainment.” He laughs and there isn’t even a hint of an apology there.

“And this is what you gossip about?”

Thunderbird hums. Hot Rod looks at him, at his pensive look and his slightly amused smile as he seems to consider how to word his response.

“Well, it’s a fun topic to discuss... you _ do _ have that mark on your neck… and he _ has _ been calling you to his habsuite…” He looks at Hot Rod and raises his hands in a placating gesture, his wings rising. “Don’t give me that look! I’m sure there’s a perfectly decent explanation!”

Hot Rod doesn’t know what look he’s giving Thunderbird, but he does his best to school his expression into some semblance of indifference. Or annoyance.

“That only implies there are _ in_decent explanations going around,” Hot Rod grumbles, wanting nothing more than to fight someone.

He should be happy. This is what they’d been aiming for, for everyone to suspect this alliance was based on something physical. This should be _ good_!

He hates that anyone could believe something like that about Deadlock.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, dear Hot Rod,” Thunderbird says, waving a hand dismissively, his wings fluttering. “And, for what it’s worth, there are _ many _ decent explanations going around as well.”

“Sure.”

“Really! There are!” Thunderbird clasps his hands together. “My favorite one is the one that says you’re secretly lovers trying to hide your relationship in plain sight. Star-crossed lovers, hiding out of fear of what high command might think!” he says dramatically. He then unclasps his hands and presses them over his spark. “Isn’t that romantic?” he asks with a sickeningly sweet voice.

“No, it isn’t,” Hot Rod says quietly. "It's sad."

Sad, but still better than longing for Deadlock with every atom of his being. Better than needing him so much that his spark is always reaching out, trying to find him.

He interlaces his fingers and tries to remember how it feels to have Deadlock’s hands against his own.

“It’s absolutely depressing, that’s what it is,” Thunderbird says, nodding solemnly, his tone so bitter that Hot Rod needs to replay the audio file to ensure he heard right.

He frowns.

“I thought you liked that stuff? You presented it so grandiosely…”

“Oh, it’s fun when it’s in movies and novels. Even in poetry! But in real life?” Thunderbird shakes his head and rolls to stand in front of Hot Rod, turning around and moving backwards to continue the conversation face to face. “It’s unnecessary drama! Why would you go through the trouble of falling in love?”

Hot Rod snorts.

“Like it’s something that can be controlled.” He doesn’t sound bitter. At all. That would say too much about how he feels on the subject.

“Of course it can be controlled!” Thunderbird says, moving his hands around for emphasis. “You take those pesky feelings and put them away until you can either feel them properly, or they go away.”

Hot Rod looks at him skeptically.

“You make it sound easy.”

“It _ is _ easy! If you have romantic feelings, then you want to live those feelings, don’t you?” He points at Hot Rod and continues without letting him answer. “You want to experience them fully. You want to be madly, absolutely, desperately in love, and let the object of your affection know it. If you don’t live your love like that, what’s the point? It only makes you unhappy, and it also puts you at risk, because it distracts you from things that matter. It can even put the one you love at risk! That’s inconvenient!” He throws his hands into the air. “You don’t get to love properly and you’re only in love for the sake of being in love. That’s pointless, useless and masochistic.” He shrugs. “It’s easier you throw those feelings away before they can become something you need to handle.”

Hot Rod takes a moment to process those words and can't stop himself from laughing. If it was that easy, he wouldn't be suffering.

“You seem to know a lot about this, Thunderbird,” Hot Rod teases. “Is there some love you’re keeping at bay?”

Thunderbird laughs and moves to Hot Rod’s side again.

“Oh, no, dear Hot Rod," he says, waving a hand dismissively. "I’m only saying that, since we’re at war, I’d do my best to avoid falling in love if I thought I was at risk of it.”

“Let me know how that works out for you,” Hot Rod says, laughing as well.

They split ways at the corridor that leads to the medibay and Hot Rod does his best to maintain the pace he’d kept while walking next to Thunderbird, even if he wants to sprint the last few meters to Deadlock’s habsuite, even though he knows that the only thing that will slow down his spark’s spinning is seeing him.

It takes him longer than he would have liked, but he reaches Deadlock’s door; knocks on it with far more eagerness than he wanted to show and interlaces his fingers again as he waits.

“D o o r,” one of his hands says against the other one.

The door opens and Deadlock takes a step back as soon as he’s in Hot Rod’s line of sight. Then he takes another step back to let Hot Rod in.

“Were you practicing on the way here?” Deadlock asks, pointing with his chin towards Hot Rod’s joined hands. There’s a tilt to his mouth that could be a fond smile. It could also be a trick of the light.

Hot Rod smiles broadly as he steps into the room, separating his hands and wiggling his fingers in the air.

“I want to be good at this. I don’t know when it’ll be useful.”

The door closes behind him and Hot Rod is alone with Deadlock. He wonders if anyone besides Thunderbird knows he’s here right now, if Thunderbird will tell anyone. He wonders what everybody thinks is happening now that they’re away from prying eyes.

Deadlock is standing three steps away from him and won’t close that distance. He hasn’t done it on the last three times he called Hot Rod to his habsuite, and Hot Rod knows that he never will.

He needs to stop thinking about that right now.

Hot Rod moves to stand in front of Deadlock and offers his hands to him.

“Okay, let’s begin!” he says.

Deadlock raises an optic ridge and presses his lips tightly, as if trying not to laugh.

“Don’t you think we should sit down first?” Deadlock asks, the laughter woven into each syllable.

Instead of answering, Hot Rod takes Deadlock’s hands and drags him to the berth, carefully keeping his mind away from other possible situations that might start the exact same way, and sits down on it.

“We’re sitting now. Let’s begin,” he says, adjusting his grip on Deadlock’s hands so their fingers are interlaced with each other’s.

Deadlock moves his hands slightly, until the pressure against Hot Rod’s palms is almost unperceivable, and quickly moves his fingers, putting a sentence in Hot Rod’s hands that Hot Rod can’t catch.

“That was too fast,” Hot Rod says, making a face.

Deadlock nods and moves his fingers again, slower than before.

“L e t’ s s t a r t w i t h w h a t y o u l e a r n e d l a s t t i m e.”

Hot Rod smirks and does his best with the words and verbs he’s been practicing for two days, his whole being filling with light whenever he does the movements correctly and Deadlock smiles at him before slowly and carefully pressing words of encouragement and praise into Hot Rod’s hands.

“W e l l d o n e.”

“T h a t w a s p e r f e c t.”

“Y o u’ v e r e a l l y b e e n p r a c t i c i n g, h a v e n’ t y o u?”

“Of course! You’re taking time off your schedule for this, I can’t make you waste your time,” Hot Rod says, a mock offended tone and a proud grin on his face.

“I don’t think you could ever waste my time,” Deadlock says, his optics focused on their joined hands.

It takes Hot Rod a moment to understand the sentence.

“Yeah, I guess anything that helps fill a couple hours in this base is better than nothing.”

Deadlock’s hold on Hot Rod’s hands tightens slightly and there’s silence.

And more silence.

Too much silence.

According to Hot Rod’s internal chronometer, it’s only been four seconds.

“Oh,” Hot Rod says, comprehension dawning on him.

Deadlock finally looks up at him.

“Sorry, I thought… I mean– I didn’t think–” Hot Rod says, the words stumbling out of his mouth, his own grip on Deadlock’s hands becoming firmer.

“Hot Rod, it’s fine,” Deadlock says, his tone neutral.

“No. No, it’s not. Spending time with you… it’s fun.” It’s more than that; every moment spent with Deadlock is perfect, the treasure that makes his spark shine. He has no way of telling Deadlock that without revealing how he feels. “It makes me… It makes me happy that you’re having fun too.”

It makes him feel special. It makes him feel worthy. It makes him feel like the center of the universe.

Deadlock’s friendship is more than he ever hoped to have.

“Fun,” Deadlock says, smiling. “I don’t think I’ve taught you that word yet.” He moves his hands against Hot Rod’s, repeating the same action a couple more times. “Try that.”

“F u n,” Hot Rod’s hands say. “F u n. F u n. F u n.”

“P e r f e c t.”

Hot Rod practices the word a couple more times, turns it around in his mind, thinks about it and all that it meant before the war started.

“We haven’t really focused on this sort of words have we?” he finally says.

Deadlock frowns.

“What sort?”

“You know… the important words,” Hot Rod says, shrugging. “You’ve taught me to introduce myself, and how to identify the elements of a room, and a few adjectives, but… none of the words that matter.”

Deadlock’s frown deepens, making Hot Rod want to reach over with his fingers to smoothen his expression.

“Explaining how to relay a plan doesn’t matter?”

“You know what I mean,” Hot Rod says reproachingly. Deadlock’s blank look tells Hot Rod that he, in fact, doesn’t. “I mean… the words you use with friends.” He can’t help the wistfulness that creeps into his voice as he thinks of the races back at Nyon. He thinks of afternoons spent trying to warm up his frame under the sun to save on fuel. He thinks of jokes and teasing, of genuine words of affection for all those people he’ll never see again. “With people you love,” he says quietly.

He doesn’t know when he went from looking at Deadlock’s face to looking at their hands.

“It’s been a while since I used those,” Deadlock says, voice as low as Hot Rod’s.

Hot Rod’s optics find Deadlock’s face and he discovers that Deadlock is also looking at their hands.

“F u n,” Hot Rod says. “That’s one word.” He gives Deadlock’s hands a quick squeeze. “Can you teach me how to describe a nice day?”

Deadlock laughs, sudden and loud, and he seems surprised by his own reaction.

“Sure.”

Hot Rod learns how to talk about the sun, the temperature, and the sky. He learns how to talk about the air, the way it smelled as the day started, before anyone came out to start their routine. Then they start talking about the days they spent with friends before the war, the days for which they used those words.

“Back in Nyon, some races were _ really _ early in the morning, you know?” he says, Deadlock’s hands still in his. “There was barely any light and sometimes you had to guess the condition the track was in, because you couldn’t see the details that well.” He grins. “I _ loved _ those races. They were exciting. Far too dangerous, but the crowd went wild when you had to do some stunt to avoid an obstacle you hadn’t noticed.”

“Of course you loved those, you show-off,” Deadlock teases.

A horrible, horrible part of Hot Rod’s processor catches on Deadlock’s words and considers them. It keeps considering them. It turns that consideration into a masochistic plan.

“How do you say that?” Hot Rod says as nonchalantly as possible. “That you loved something?”

Deadlock’s fingers are still interlaced with Hot Rod’s, but at some point during the conversation their grip slipped, and now they look like they’re holding hands. Deadlock adjusts his hands’ position.

“Like this,” he says, slowly moving his fingers.

Hot Rod repeats the words until he knows them.

“And what about other sorts of love? Is there a difference?” He hopes his voice hasn’t betrayed him. “This is the love for a thing, right? What about when it’s love for a friend? Or romantic love? How do you convey the difference without all the modifiers we have when we talk?”

Deadlock in-vents deeply.

“Well,” he says, “there are some small differences.” He repeats the word ‘love’, but there’s more pressure below Hot Rod’s index finger. “That one’s platonic. For friends.”

Hot Rod presses the word into Deadlock’s hands, meaning it every single time.

“And for romantic love… if you wanted to tell someone you are in love with them…” The word ‘love’ again, except at the end Deadlock’s thumb caresses the side of Hot Rod’s hand. “If you were in love with someone, you’d say…” He holds onto Hot Rod’s hands a bit more tightly. “I l o v e y o u.”

Shame fills Hot Rod as he allows himself to imagine that Deadlock means it, and he feels worse when he lowers his head, closes his eyes and says, “Can you repeat that?”

He takes the memory of those words and saves it next to the phantom touch of Deadlock’s lips on his own.

Small lies to dream about.

Slowly, carefully, as tenderly as he can allow himself, he presses the words against Deadlock’s hands.

“I l o v e y o u,” he says. He says it again. And again. He says it even after it’s become clear that he knows how to say it, when there are no more excuses to repeat it. Since Deadlock doesn’t make him stop, he stops himself.

“I think that’s enough for today,” Deadlock says, letting go of Hot Rod’s hands and standing up, putting distance between them again. It's not a big room. Deadlock is still close enough that, if he wanted to, he could be in Hot Rod's space in a second.

He remembers the rumors and laughs despite the pain in his spark.

“What is it?” Deadlock asks, frowning and looking down at his own frame, examining it.

“I ran into Thunderbird on the way here.” Hot Rod smirks. “He told me that you calling me over to your habsuite so often has made everyone suspicious.”

Deadlock snorts and his lips curl upwards in what is definitely a smile, albeit a disbelieving one.

“You know, I never thought it was going to be so easy to convince everyone,” Deadlock says, seemingly amused, except the smile doesn’t reach his optics. They remain disbelieving, with a hint of discomfort.

Hot Rod can’t laugh anymore.

“People can be really stupid,” he says, standing up and trying to seem sympathetic. “If they took a moment to think about it, they’d know it couldn’t be true.”

The discomfort disappears, replaced by sadness. The disbelief remains. So does the amused smile.

“You sound so certain. What makes you think I’d never try something?”

Hot Rod wants to say, _ You don’t want me_.

He wants to say, _ You always keep your distance when we’re alone. _

He wants to say, _ Back in Ater, you stopped kissing me when you realized it was me_.

“I know you. You’re not like that.”

Deadlock’s eyes widen. His mouth opens slightly. He blinks.

“You really think that?” he asks, strangely subdued.

Hot Rod nods and shrugs.

_ You've had a thousand chances and you've never touched me. _

“I trust you. You think I’d spend time alone with you if I didn’t?”

Deadlock takes a step towards him and, for a moment, Hot Rod entertains the thought that he’s going to kiss him, but then he doesn’t get any closer.

Deadlock. Doesn’t. Want him.

Someday, he’ll finally get that into his head.

He thinks of Deadlock’s hands telling him he’s in love with him, and Hot Rod’s spark aches with longing. He shouldn’t have done that; now he has another reminder of what he’ll never have, something even more unattainable than Deadlock’s desire.

“Besides,” Hot Rod adds, unable to stop himself, “you know as well as I do that if you tried something, I’d kick your aft.”

“I know,” Deadlock says, smirking and rubbing his forearm, probably thinking of the times Hot Rod had thrown him to the floor while sparring.

_ No, you don’t_, Hot Rod thinks. _ I lied. _

The truth is, Deadlock could do anything he wanted. Hot Rod would let him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos are always appreciated and comments are loved and cherished because they make me happy. If you liked this fic and feel like promoting it, would you reblog [this post](https://veto-power-over-fanworks.tumblr.com/post/188800373130/important-things)? Thank you!


End file.
